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Basic Apollo Expansionist Guide

Detailed is a basic guide that can be modified to work for all victory conditions, you will win at the earliest turn going domination but your turns will take 20 min each if you go that route.

This guide assumes: Apollo, Quick, Small as map settings but will adapt to any setup.

Your goal with this method is to settle every place on the planet as fast as possible. This is because cities produce "stuff" and you win by having the most "stuff", (Technology, troops, culture, ect.) My first attempt at Apollo was a domination win in turn 131 but this is only because I built and activated the beacon before I built my first soldier unit and had no energy when I fought my wars. I could have knocked 5-10 turns off If I didn't have to build everything.

Sponsor: Polystralia (Required).
Colonist: Pioneers (Artist are safer and easier but a tad slower, but both are good)
Spacecraft: Whatever you like, as long as you understand and play to the strength it gives.
Cargo: Cryotome for the free virtue (without Starships take the free worker)

Virtues: Industry (Required) Knowledge (Preferred)
These two virtue paths support wide empires the best. I will admit the Might tree might be a replacement for Research, ignore growth it has nothing that you want except the 10 virtue synergy, and you will have WAY better health boosting options on the Industry tree so you wont be getting 10 virtues in your alt choice, unless you delay victory (at the end of the game I was getting new virtues almost every turn).

Virtue Path: Foresight (aside from the first few turns you will never have positive health but its a prerequisite), Social Mores (This will be your main culture growth for a while), Laboratory Apprenticeship, Cohesive Values. Now we switch to industry for our bread and butter virtues: Labor Logistics, Central Planning, Standardized Architecture, Profiteering!!!!!! (+1.5 Global health per city), Interdependence Network!!!!!!. At this point switch pack to knowledge and pick up Community Medicine!, Networked Datalinks, and Memeweb. (I need to do more research to see if Memeweb is good to get, a virtue that does nothing when you get it might not be worth it.) Then back to Liquidity, Civic Duty, and Magnasanti!.

Tech Path: Pioneering-Planetary Survey-Ecology(swap with Planetary Survey possible depending on map)- Genetics(Health Buildings)- Engineering(titanium)-Computing(Spys)-Chemistry?-Rest is Military stuff get 6-6 in Supremacy, Purity by getting the cheapest +20 Affinity techs, like Ballistics and Power Systems. Don't worry to much about what they do you need a military fast at this point. Then get 5 harmony which will let you go to war! After this just keep grabbing more Supremacy/Purity stuff till you win!

Build Order
Build 3-4 explorers right off the bat then a worker. Explore methodically so they find the near by excavation sites, and can refill their modules quickly. Once you have Pioneering build/buy lots of Colonists, LOTS. Watch you energy, when you can afford one, buy one Cities are your lifeblood they give you everything, you want MORE CITIES!!! Once you get Ecology researched build a fence then a trade depot, then 2-3 trade vessels. After this build the basic buildings at the capital, (clinic, Pharmalab, Cytonursery, Old earth relic) Then for the rest of the game Trade Vessels. All cities you build will look like this: build trade depot, build clinic, at city level 3 build Pharma Lab, at city level 5 build Cytonursery. The rest of the time build Trade vessels/colonists, plus 1 worker if you have something nice to improve. Don't fight the bugs just pray they don't destroy to many of your colonists. When your health reaches -10 check how many cities you have going up (include colonists in production), if its 4 or more going forward build clinics and other health buildings in your cities. If a city still has downtime it can build either a recycler, a worker, or trade vessels for future cities. This leads us to our most important discussion:

Managing Health: Health is the currency that lets you build new cities. If it gets to low you cant build new cities anymore. Small amounts of negative health are minor and the benefit of more cities outweighs it. Large negative health happens but will slow your growth. Do what you can to minimize this so you can continue to grow. A few rules to remember local health can never be positive, the + health from your buildings that exceeds your population is wasted. By default if you had every health building in a city it would contribute 0 negative health to your empire when it reaches size 16. Before that it will negatively impact your global health, so you need virtues and affinity bonuses to offset this. If you have Profiteering this break even city size becomes 10, with Community Medicine it becomes 6. You will have these most of the game with the virtue path laid out above. I usually get Profiteering when my trade network is coming online and Community Medicine when my cap reaches size 6. Now Community Medicine does nothing to city sizes below 6 so when we decrease below that size this virtue helps us mitigate the negative health from new cities but does not lower the break even point. 5-5 Supremacy Purity lowers the point to 6 as well, put another way it lets a size 6 city support a size 2 city with no increase to unhealth. Once we have 5-5-5 the city break even size is just over 3, and every size 6 city can support two size 1 cities! Once you get Magnasanti, every 5 buildings you have anywhere let you support another size 1 city! As you can see once you get your empire going, your cities are generating crazy amounts of positive health, but you need cities to support your future cities, which means high unhealth out of the gate. Once you start attacking, captured cities will give you ALOT of temporary unhealth. I have had over 100 unhealth from captured cities. You have 2 options, one let your enemies build lots of troops and keep your citizens healthy, or 2 crush your enemy under your feet and take a temporary hit to health. Note here that by the time you get 5-5-5 new cities are healthy after 3 turns, so even if you have crazy 100+ unhealth keep building new cities, they will help manage it. (of course at a point your outpost stop growing but don't stop building them)

At a point in the game you will not be able to safely expand like the plague, so you must start expanding aggressively. Build basic solders to start and clear the aliens on land, then gunboats to clear the water. Once the nuisances are gone hit the AI, they don't defend their cities properly and you can take them with 2-3 solders or preferably and more safely gunboats and Melee boats. Gunners are to slow so I don't like them, and seige, that's for stationary battles, you will be moving nonstop. Don't use subs they don't upgrade well with our affinity choice. Your solders should be approaching their cities when you hit 6-6 and your boats just after, when you hit 7-7 take every coastal or floating city, nothing can stop you. Late game I like the AutoSled because its a fast cleanup unit and it can catch up to the front line, everything else is just soo slow.

Traits: The new stuff! Dont buy any agreements with the comp, you wont have the capital at first and the friendship later. Start getting your +2 trade routes in every city, then get Military Imperial but only 1 rank, The comp loves this one and will oftentimes offer agreements (this might hold them off from attacking you early?), then max domestic cooperative. Finally grab a political one, i like subtle but whatever you want.

Trade Routes:
Trade Routes are weird. They give bigger bonuses the bigger the gap is between the two cities, This means ideally you want 3 super big cities and the rest super small cities. This make the small cities super producers and they will far our produce the large cities. This is nice since the new cities need infrastructure and troops more than the old cities. Sadly all cities grow in size, so try to specialize them in either production or food (with your 0-1 workers you have to work with, lol). Well over half you production will come from trade routes and by the end of the game it will be closer to 80%.

Benchmarks:

5 cities by turn 50
15-20 cities at turn 100 (I had 17 in my game but had 2 colonists eaten by aliens)
I started bug clearing at turn 100, but I had 10 nests in my immediate area. They never turned blue.
Choose victory type by turn 100, I went contact and had it up by turn 105 but still got domination before it finished, I could have finished faster had I gone straight domination.

Turn 120 You should be near victory, If at war it might make sense to build the other buildings if you have enough troops in the field, since the +.2 health per building will offset the conquer penalty.

I won on turn 131 with domination but this is map dependent I would say it can go between 120-150. I was researching outer ring tech every 2 turns and getting virtues every 5-10 turns.

Things to note:

Don't worry about academies, by the time you research the tech, build the workers and drop a few academies the game is over.

The prosperity virtue tree is horrid for this strategy and is the worst tree despite the fact we need nothing but the +health virtues, even might gives better because it gets us those affinity bonuses to health

As for uploading save states, I uploaded turn 42, 77, 100, and 132 which I setup so you just attack the city and win. The last one was modified for easy viewing. (you don't have 100 trade routes coming online, and its setup on the last turn which I didn't have before.) Also if you want a contact victory just wait 3 turns!